Maddie James learning center set to open

May 14, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Kajsa James stands under a canopy shaped like sails at the Maddie James Seaside Learning Center at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. The $4 million center is named after James' daughter, who died at age 5 in 2011 of an inoperable brain tumor. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The Maddie James Seaside Learning Center will have its official opening Saturday at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Maddie James is the namesake of the Ocean Institute's new learning center. She died at age 5 in 2011. FILE PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMES FAMILY

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Workers build a pinrail, used to secure lines on a sailboat, at the Maddie James Seaside Learning Center at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. The pinrail will be used by visitors to learn sailing techniques, such as those used on the brig Pilgrim that is docked at the Ocean Institute. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The tall ship Spirit of Dana Point docks at the new Maddie James Seaside Learning Center at the Ocean Institute. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A sea bass pen sits at the end of the 300-foot Ocean Science Discovery Landing at the Maddie James Seaside Learning Center in Dana Point. The pen will hold fish being raised at the Ocean Institute before being released into the wild as adults. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Kajsa James formed the Maddie James Foundation in honor of her daughter, Maddie, who died at age 5 in 2011. The foundation raised $1 million to help fund the Ocean Institute's new Maddie James Seaside Learning Center in Dana Point. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Kajsa James stands under a canopy shaped like sails at the Maddie James Seaside Learning Center at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. The $4 million center is named after James' daughter, who died at age 5 in 2011 of an inoperable brain tumor.PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Maddie James Seaside Learning Center

Here are key components of the new Maddie James Seaside Learning Center, which will have its grand opening Saturday at the Ocean Institute at Dana Point Harbor. The 10 a.m. ceremony will be attended by officials and participants in the Mile for Maddie walk.

• Historic Maritime Pier: Visitors can drop and pull an anchor, cast off and hoist a longboat and raise and lower the sails on a historical mast.

• Biological Diversity Lab: This room will have tanks filled with exotic-sounding sea creatures such as the hornyhead turbot, longfin sanddab, fantail sole, halfmoon, specklefin midshipman and various invertebrate fish. Two openings will enable scientists and others to take water samples from Dana Point Harbor.

Center combines learning and the sea

Kajsa James believes her daughter, Maddie, lives in the details of the new learning center that Dana Point's Ocean Institute will officially open on Saturday.

Maddie, of Capistrano Beach, died as a result of an inoperable brain tumor in 2011 at the age of 5. The Maddie James Seaside Learning Center is her legacy – a renovation of the Ocean Institute's dock into a trove of interactive educational stations.

The Ocean Institute had dreamed for years of building the center, but finding funding was proving tricky. The institute had raised about $3 million in grants from the state and other sources but needed an additional $1 million. Maddie loved going to the Ocean Institute and wanted the learning center to be built.

In what seemed like fate, Kajsa James noticed that buying the naming rights to the center would raise the last $1 million. It seemed the proper tribute to her daughter.

"She looked at me and said, 'Are we going to help build it?'" James recalled. "And I told her, 'Yes, yes we are.'"

Million-dollar effort

James raised $500 by winning a reader vote in an Orange County Register photo contest. Though she said "Maddie thought that would build the place," there was still a long way to go to reach $1 million.

James formed the Maddie James Foundation, which took its first donation in February 2011, the month before Maddie died. It raised $400,000 from individual donations and $100,000 in the first "A Mile for Maddie" walk in May 2011.

The "Reaching for the Sea Stars" gala in May 2011 at the St. Regis Monarch Beach resort raised $500,000.

The third annual A Mile for Maddie will be held Saturday, traveling 1.2 miles along a coastal bluff from the Strand parking lot at the end of Selva Road in Dana Point to the Ocean Institute as a benefit for the foundation, which supports ongoing operation of the learning center. Registration for the walk is closed.

New landing, pier

The new learning center expands on existing interactive stations. The 300-foot Ocean Science Discovery Landing replaces a rickety 1970s-era dock with a more solid concrete structure. Initially it will be for Ocean Institute-organized classes and groups but eventually will open more to the general public.

"It speaks volumes if you can actually put your hands on something rather than just being told," said Julianne Steers, the Ocean Institute's director of husbandry, who has overseen much of the construction of the landing and the new 100-foot Historic Maritime Pier.

Many of the center's features remind James of Maddie. Maritime tradition says you should place a coin under a mast before it's attached to the floor. When workers were raising the mast at the Historic Maritime Pier, James – now vice president of development for the Ocean Institute – found she had Maddie's favorite coin from a trip to the Cayman Islands in her pocket. It was from 2005, the year Maddie was born, and had a sailing ship imprinted on it.

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